


Hell or High White Count

by Aviena



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Deacon saves the day?, F/M, Mother-Son Relationship, Self-Sacrifice, railroad ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 00:32:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5846980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aviena/pseuds/Aviena
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Institute's about to become a hole in the ground, but Charmer can't leave her son to die alone. Deacon won't let it happen without a fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It’s worse than Charmer expected. The Railroad, the escapee Gen 3s – they’re winning, and they fucking _deserve it_ , but she’s gripped by an inexplicable sadness. It looks like Jackson Pollock’s taken a bucket of blood and gore and synth components to the Institute’s once gleaming corridors. Shards of glass crunch beneath her boots, scattering the emergency LEDs like pale, eerie searchlights. The kind they’d use to search for you if you drowned. Charmer’s running support, this time, and it’s just as well, because the synths they freed are charging ahead. They wave their mining lasers like pitchforks, and they cut down every lab coat they see. It’s gruesome, really, the way their faces contort with joy; the way they exult in the carnage.

That should reassure her, frankly. Machines could never be so bloodthirsty as humans. If that’s not proof the Railroad’s in the right, what is?

The merry horde really doesn’t need her help anymore. Besides, Charmer has a pit stop to make. She’s tried to keep her connection to Father on the down low. She had to tell Dez, obviously, and Deacon knows too. That’s pretty much a given, because Deacon knows everything about her. But he’s off on the other side of the atrium somewhere, herding the gleeful, screaming Gen 3s towards the relay room.

Which means he’s not here to stop her breaking away from the pack and darting up the gleaming spiral stairs.

There’s a Gen 3 waiting for her on the landing. He’s not with the rebels – it’s obvious from the way he raises his gun, lowers it uncertainly, raises it again. “Ma’am?” He sounds terrified. The poor guy’s probably been working maintenance his whole life.

Charmer’s still got those suburbanite mom’s instincts. She wants to lower her weapon, tell him it’s all gonna be okay. But that would be stupid. “Put down the gun,” she says instead. Firm, but not harsh. “If you run for the relay room, we’ll get you to the surface safe.”

He gapes at her for a moment. His expression is the same one Charmer probably wore when she clawed her way out of cryo. He’s shaking his head, moving his finger on the trigger –

Charmer shoots him, and he hits the floor with a thud. There’s nothing more human about Gen 3s than the way they crumple, knees and hips and neck, when someone’s put a bullet in their head. She doesn’t look at him as she rushes past. She’s got somewhere to be.

Father’s in his room, confined to a bed that looks an awful lot like a shiny silver tomb. She’s made it this far, but her knees lock up when they make eye contact. She barely chokes off a grating, hysterical laugh. He’s not angry. He’s _disappointed_.

“Mother,” he says simply. The word’s short and heavy. _Too_ short. There’s enough left unsaid between them to fill a fucking novel, but Shaun will never acknowledge it. More than half of it, he’d just refuse to hear. It doesn’t fit his narrative. He’s humanity’s saviour, after all, and it won’t do for the history books to seem too rambling.

It’s not her fault, Charmer tells herself for the thousandth time. Not her fault he turned out so cold. Not her fault she missed his whole life. She’s frozen stock still, but she’ll find a way to stand by his side even if she has to crawl there. The effort to approach him leaves her weak-kneed and dizzy, like she’s dragged the weight of all their missing time along behind her.

“Shaun,” she manages to reply. Kicks herself for sounding like a bad Saturday night special.

He doesn’t seem to notice. “You’ve ruined _everything_. Everything we’ve built. Everything I spent my whole life trying to achieve!”

She balls her hands into fists, hides them under the lip of the bed. She’s had this fight with him in her head already. A million times. It never ends well. “Everything you built was on the backs of slaves and kidnappings, Shaun.”

He shocks her when he turns his face away. “It doesn’t matter now. Your friends are going to destroy the Institute, and the last hope we had for humanity.”

“You can come with me.” It sounded less crazy in her head, but she keeps talking anyway. “We’re relaying out as many people as we can. That can include you.”

He scoffs, shakes his head, and she’s acutely aware of the dark circles around his eyes. His cheeks are hollow, his pillows dusted with fallen hair. “I’m dying either way. Just go. Your work is finished here.”

“I’m not leaving without you, Shaun.” The words are out before she even realizes she’s speaking. Parents aren’t meant to outlive their children. She’s never truly appreciated the tragedy in those words until now. Now she sees the home videos playing behind her eyes, unmade. The scraped knees she’ll never kiss better, and the petty teenage stunts he’ll never pull. 

He turns back to look at her abruptly. “I can’t walk, mother, and you can’t carry me.”

She seizes the edge of the bed, tries to drag it away with her. It doesn’t move an inch. She goes to slide her arm under his shoulder instead – he’s an old man, how heavy can he be? – but he howls raggedly, slapping her away. He’s in too much pain. She’s starting to feel it too, building low in her chest, far enough down that she can’t quite tell where it is. The lungs, the heart, the spinal cord. Somewhere vital.

“Then I guess I’m staying here.”

He’s looking at her curiously, like he can’t quite believe his eyes. Like she’s some peculiar lab specimen he’s struggling to understand. 

It’s not her _fault_.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s fucking chaos out here. In here. Down here. Deacon isn’t actually sure where he _is_ at the moment, you know, geographically. But he knows the place is going insane.

The Gen 3s are really giving the Institute what-for. It was pretty tense at first, all sharp, quiet breaths and sudden battle cries, but momentum’s on their side now, and Deacon’s support role has quickly turned into a follow-along-behind-and-admire-the-synths'-handiwork role. Charmer’s off somewhere by herself, probably trying to limit the bloodshed. He’s not sure how well that’s gonna go for her. The Gen 3s show no sign of stopping. It’s a weird feeling, this. Impending victory. 

_Victory_. The word tastes funny on his tongue. It’s not something Deacon’s used to - not when it matters, anyway. He’s almost afraid to think about it, just in case he jinxes it and sends the whole op horribly sideways.

The order to evacuate comes through loud and clear, and for a moment the escaped synths look almost disappointed. Confused, certainly. But their faces slowly clear, the berserker rage fades.”Where’s the relay room?” someone asks uncertainly.

It’s Z1-14 that eventually answers. Deacon has a sneaking admiration for the man’s quiet leadership. Or maybe it’s just that he’s a brother in baldness. “Follow me,” Z1 says. Deacon follows them into one of the underground installation’s many narrow corridors, throws a glance at his watch. The place will be going up in a mushroom cloud any time now.

He thumbs his walkie-talkie (and manages not to giggle madly at the name, this time). “It’s T minus what?”

“Fif-teeeeeeen minutes, man!” Tom’s voice is staticky, but he’s crowing like the world’s happiest rooster. “Then BOOM!”

Deacon can’t help a little shiver. He doesn’t like being at ground zero, even if it’s _future_ ground zero. 

“Our group’s already reached the relay room,” Dez chimes in. She sounds less distorted than Tom, maybe cause she’s closer. “Charmer, how’s the rear guard doing?”

There’s an awkward pause. Deacon grins widely at the thought of Charmer fumbling her transceiver. She’s always hated the things. _Too bulky and unreliable_ , she’ll grumble, red-cheeked and embarrassed. _You think you’re such hot stuff, Dee?_ You _can be in charge of comms!_

“Charmer?” Dez is irritated. “It’s the big button. The _only_ button.”

Still silence. 

"Check it out, Deacon."

But Deacon’s already running. She’s fine. She has to be. It wouldn’t be fair to finally _win one_ just to have Charmer snatched away. Surely not even Deacon’s luck is that bad.

Surely.

His stomach’s turning clumsy somersaults, but he carefully checks the face of every corpse he passes. They’re mostly wearing lab coats, or those weird colour coded jumpsuits – but there’s a woman in jeans and a t-shirt up ahead, and Deacon’s heart stops dead in his chest until he turns her over. It’s one of the synths, but it still feels like forever before his heart finds its rhythm again. She’s fine. She has to be.

He holds the transceiver up to his mouth, feels his dry lips scrape against it. “Not the best time for spontaneous hide and seek, sugar. Points for execution, though.”

The handset crackles, and his heart leaps up into his throat – but it’s only Dez. “No luck, I take it.”

“Not done yet.”

The clock’s ticking down. Twelve minutes. Eleven. He’s sprinting through the labyrinthine corridors so quickly he skids on the floors, his lungs burn, his sunglasses fog. He’s trying to plan ahead, but his head’s refusing to cooperate. What if he doesn’t find her? _Nope. Have to find her._ What if she’s dead? _No way. She can’t be._ What if this whole place goes nuclear beneath his feet? He doesn’t have an answer for that one. 

He doesn’t like being at ground zero.

He’s barrelling past the scene of a massacre outside BioScience when it hits him: he’s an idiot. And he definitely knows where Charmer’s gone.


	3. Chapter 3

“It’s T minus what?”

“Fif-teeeeeeen minutes, man! Then BOOM!”

It’s all starting to feel a little too real. Poetic, too, when Charmer really thinks about it. She and Shaun are people out of time; ghouls wearing smoothskin masks. Who is it those nut job cultists worship? Atom? Looks like He’s coming to reclaim his mislaid sacrifices. They’ve had a good run, really. They’ve made it more than two hundred fucking years. That’s worth something. It has to be.

“Not the best time for spontaneous hide and seek, sugar.” Charmer has to clutch the bed frame for support. “Points for execution, though.” _Of course_ Deacon’s looking for her. He’ll stay until the last moment, probably, calling her name over the radio until the transmission dies and she goes up in an atom bomb blaze.

She should do something. Say something. Something to make him leave sooner, because this is breaking her fucking heart. But she knows him too well to think it would ever work.

Shaun’s fingers close over hers. They’re shaking slightly, hesitant, and when he sees her eyes widen they quickly draw back. So she takes his hand instead, smiles tremulously. Maybe she should say something motherly and wise. But she can’t think of anything. All she knows about motherhood is sleepless nights and diapers. None of the books quite covered her current situation.

He smiles back, and she feels like she might be sick. It’s sweet like a sugar bomb overdose, oily like a garage floor. But it’s all she’s gonna get, and nuclear fission can’t tear her away.

“You don’t have to stay,” he says again.

She shakes her head. Again. “Yeah. I do.” She glances at her pip boy. T minus ten. Hoo boy. She hears footsteps on the stairs and casually readies her pistol. She’s _pretty sure_ Shaun will order any lackeys not to shoot her, but you never know.

Oh, fuck. It’s Deacon.

“Jesus.” The relief in his voice as he rounds the top of the stairs is staggering; he’s choked up like that time she dared him to chug a bottle of Nuka Quantum, but this time it’s making her heart ache. “What the fuck are we all standing around for? Are we holding peace talks or something? ‘Cause I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you’re a little late.”

Shaun makes a noise like a wounded animal. “You gutter-crawling, flea-ridden-“

Charmer speaks right over the top of him. “Get to the relay room, Dee. I’m staying with my son.”

She can read what he’s thinking in the way his brows plunge down beneath the rim of his sunglasses; the way his breathing hitches and his adam’s apple bobs anxiously. He ignores Shaun’s insults and stares her down, intent, pleading, _scared_. She wishes he hadn’t come.

“No, see, you can’t be. Because that’s fucking crazy. You do know this place is about to go nuclear, right?”

Their walkie talkies crackle. Dez’s distorted voice splits the silence like a guillotine. “We’re eight minutes out, Deacon.” There’s a pause. “I’m sorry to say it, but you need to turn around. We don’t want to lose you, too.”

Deacon rakes a hand over his scalp. “You heard the woman. Let’s go.”

Charmer’s shaking. _Actually_ shaking, like she’s the elderly invalid. “It’s not going to happen. You need to get out of here.”

He’s across the floor in a heartbeat, seizing one of her shaking hands in his own. His palms are hot, like he’s carrying the fusion reactor around inside him. “You seriously want to die here? Just because you can?” Shaun’s silent at her side, stock still and faded.

“Deacon!” Dez cuts in again. “Acknowledge, god damn it.”

“On my way,” Deacon answers her. But he stays put.

Charmer tries to snatch her hand away. “Leave.”

No dice.

She can play dirty. Has to, really, or else heaven’s going up in flames with her. “What, you’re staying ‘cause you _love_ me?” She loads the word with scorn, fills it with all the disdain she can muster.

Deacon just stares at her, clutching her hand like he’s forgotten how to let go. Charmer’s got a spreading pain in her chest, and it’s shredding her nerve ends fibre by fibre. But she presses on, because she’s got no other choice. “I knew you were desperate, but this is on a whole other level. What’d it take to win your undying devotion, huh? A few kisses? A quick pity fuck?” She turns away because she can’t keep a straight face. Even Shaun’s looking at her in horror, and she doubts it’s because of her language.

Seven minutes.

Charmer fights down panic. Deacon’s grip tightens ‘til it’s painful. Anger’s a good sign.

“So how about it, Deacon? You wanna hold me while the place explodes? Tell me how love never dies? ‘Cause I think you’re gonna be disappointed.”

He lets go of her hand, and it’s all Charmer can do not to cry with relief. With despair, too, but it’s better than the alternative. He’ll probably tell someone this story one day, but he’ll dress it up. Throw in a few metaphors, change a couple of names, possibly remove himself from the saga entirely. He’ll make it a lie. A cautionary tale.

Charmer can live with that, just so long as the stories continue.


	4. Chapter 4

That hurt. A lot. But Deacon knows a lie when he hears one, even if it’s clever. Even if it’s cutting. Even if it finds his insecurities and jabs them with a shock baton. Charmer’s not looking at him – total giveaway. She wants him to leave without her. Might as well ask him to cut off his own arm.

But Deacon’s not a total idiot. Charmer’s stubborn, and once she makes a decision she sticks to it like a bloodbug on a brahmin. He could stand here for hours, talk her ear off, list the millions of reasons she should give up her stupid last stand and come _with_ him. But it wouldn’t help.

And they don’t have hours. They’ve got seven fucking minutes.

“I do love you.” He’d like to say the words are out before he can stop them, that his mouth’s moving faster than his brain. He’d be lying. _I love you._ They’re words he’s been carrying around with him for months, stuffed into the dustiest corners of his mind where they’re least likely to find their way out. _I love you_. They bounce around in his head all day, quiet when she’s with him, deafening when she’s not. “I love you.” They’re pathetic. But _fuck_ , they’re so true they hurt.

Charmer flinches, jerks away like he’s stabbed her. “Dee-“ She’s not surprised though. She knows. Maybe she always has.

“And you’re coming with me.”

She shakes her head. Stubborn. She’s six minutes from oblivion, and she won’t be happy ‘til she’s got it. He reaches out to her, slow and careful, and takes her in his arms. She’s tense at first, worried he’ll do something drastic, but she gradually relaxes. Lets him kiss her while her son looks away in distaste. “Please leave,” she whispers. Her voice trembles like a harp string about to break.

“Sorry, sugar.” He locks his arms around her waist.

Her eyes go wide, so clear he can see eternity reflected back at him. “Let me go.” Her arms are pinned to her sides, and she tries to throw him off. But Charmer’s never been much chop at hand-to-hand.

“Mother...” Shaun tries to lift himself from the bed. Pity he couldn’t be bothered to do that earlier. His spindly arms give out, and he can only watch nervously.

“Say goodbye,” Deacon murmurs into her ear. Charmer’s twisting against him, trying to break his hold, and Deacon feels a little sick. It’s for the greater good. The _best_.

“Let me _go_!” Oh well. He tried.

He starts to _drag_ her away, and she’s not having any of it. She kicks and twists and wails, rakes her nails down his chest, tries to knock him off his feet. Deacon’s not a big guy, but he’s bigger than Charmer, and at the moment he’s incredibly grateful for that. Then she manages to get an elbow in his gut, and he has to stop thinking. Just step, drag, step, drag, try to ignore the anguish in her cries. Step, drag, step, drag, shut out her hysterical screams when Shaun calls a farewell.

Five minutes. Shit.

At the bottom of the stairs, she starts to cry softly, and that might be worse than the screaming. “Please don’t do this,” she sobs. “Please, Dee, if you really do love me –“

“Don’t do that,” he gasps. His lungs are burning. His legs are jelly. But he has to keep going. No other option. “You haven’t got a chance in hell of changing my mind.”

“He’s my son!”

“I don’t _care_!” His voice cracks, his heart breaks open like a dam collapsing. She goes stiff in his arms, cold and still like stone. “I can’t – I don’t – I can’t lose you.” Sugar, Charmer, Alex – all her names seem insufficient. How do you tell someone you can’t live without them? That they’ll _own_ you, utterly and completely, even if they never speak to you again.

She starts to struggle again, growling and crying in turns, and it’s a wonder Deacon doesn’t start sobbing too. Maybe it’s the countdown running in his head. Four minutes. Three thirty. Two.

He step, drag, steps into the relay room with twenty seconds to go. Tom – crazy fucker – is still there. He’s got a little boy in tow, and something about him hits Charmer like a .308. She collapses in Deacon’s arms and just _keens_. Deacons eyes are stinging. But there’s no _time_. Tom eyes her nervously, but still gets them out of there quick-smart.

They watch the explosion from the top of the Mass Fusion building. Charmer kneels there on the concrete, buries her face in her hands, and Deacon just holds her. He’s not sure what else to do.

When she wriggles out of his arms and shoves him away, he knows what oblivion must feel like.


	5. Chapter 5

Two weeks pass, but it feels like two hundred. The Railroad’s utterly euphoric: no more Institute. No more scurrying around like rats, always waiting for the next attack. No more purpose-built slaves dying without ever having seen the sun. Deacon should be euphoric too, but he hasn’t laid eyes on Charmer for two weeks. She took the kid’s hand and _fled_ , leaving Deacon’s soul draining onto the concrete and the rest of them staring in awe at the mushroom cloud. There’s no other word for it. She just ran.

Away from him.

So Deacon’s not euphoric. He’s numb. The work of the Railroad’s intel man will never be done, so he can at least _pretend_ to be busy. For a while, he can almost believe his own press. But the lie quickly loses its lustre. When he wanders through the Fens with an ear out for Brotherhood survivors, he’s really listening for the sound of Charmer’s voice. When he trudges around Diamond City in the guards’ stifling leather armour, he’s keeping both eyes peeled for her.

So it’s a shock when it’s Charmer that finds him.

He’s loitering in the Bunker Hill marketplace, not too far from where he first clapped eyes on her. She didn’t know it was him at the time, of course, but he’ll probably never forget it. She’d come up to him with a smile, all wary eyes and sunburnt nose, squeezed into that blue and yellow skin suit as if the universe was doing Deacon a personal favour. She’d smiled, just because she could, and Deacon was floored. In the wasteland, unwary eye contact with strangers tends to be code for _please, sir, shoot me in the leg and take all my caps_.

Obviously, Deacon did neither of those things. But he remembers her smile with painful clarity.

“Dee.” 

Deacon nearly jumps out of his skin. She’s standing behind him, leaning casually against the Hill’s pale tower, arms folded over her chest. Sternly? Protectively? When he finally manages to respond, he’s as raspy as if he’d had a bottle of bourbon for breakfast. “Oh, hi.”

It wasn’t his finest moment.

She’s got no smiles this time, just gravitas. And sorrow: thick layers of it that wrap round and cover her like a shawl. The skin around her eyes is a papery blue, and thin strands of hair lash at her neck in the midmorning breeze.”How are things?” Her voice is raspy too, but to Deacon’s ears it’s flawless.

He shrugs. “Oh, you know. Same old. Workload’s gone down a bit, though, for obvious reasons. Say, how’s your French?”

She blinks at him for a moment, like she’s forgotten that this is just how he talks. Like she’s forgotten him. “Thinking of learning a language?”

“Why not? You know what they say, sugar, use it or you lose it. Have to keep the old noggin sharp somehow.”

“I need to thank you.”

It’s his turn to blink dumbly. “Say again?”

Charmer wraps her arms around herself more tightly. She speaks like she’s reading from a script, like a nervous bride stuttering through her vows. “I just – I don’t know what came over me. I was so _tired_ , and angry, and Shaun was my _son_ -“ She chokes off a sob and drags a hand over her mouth. Deacon just wants to hold her; tell her that everything will be okay; tell her that he misses her so badly he’s been drinking bourbon for breakfast. That he needs her. Like breathing.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he says instead. He moves closer, waits for her to recoil in distaste. But she doesn’t. She leans into him, eyes closed against the wind, and leans her head on his shoulder. He’s almost afraid to breathe, just in case he jostles her loose. Just in case it reminds her that she should despise him.

“You saved my life,” she whispers, gripping the hem of his bulky wastelander coat. “Thanks for that.”

He turns his head towards her, feels her sigh gently when his lips brush against her ear. “Don’t mention it. I figure we’re pretty much even when it comes to life-saving. Not on nuka cola, though. You definitely still owe me for one.” 

Finally - _finally_ \- the corners of her mouth quirk upwards. “So that’s why you saved me,” she teases. When she looks at him, her eyes have lost some of their sadness. A few strands of sorrow come free of her mantle and drift forgotten to the ground.

_Nah. I saved you ‘cause I love you. I’m wrapped so tight around your finger that I’ll let the cola slide._

“Got it in one, sugar.” He doesn’t need to say anything more. “Say, who was that kid, anyway?”

Charmer shakes her head. “It’s a very long story.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

_I'm not going anywhere ever._


End file.
